Va Disability Erectile Dysfunction

Va Disability Erectile Dysfunction

What Is Sexual Dysfunction?

Sexual problems or sexual dysfunction can refer to a wide range of issues, including decreased sexual desire, premature ejaculation, or erectile dysfunction. Studies have found that people who have been exposed traumatic events may be more likely to experience sexual dysfunction.

This may be due to a number of reasons. For example, the experience of a traumatic event (such as a sexual assault) may contribute to a person feeling anxious rather than relaxed in intimate settings. Injuries sustained during a traumatic event may also interfere with sexual functioning.

Finally, the high level of anxiety (or even PTSD) that results from traumatic exposure may also contribute to sexual problems. One population that can have extensive exposure to traumatic experiences and PTSD is military veterans.

Erectile Dysfunction and VA Disability – Diabetes and Other Causes

Many veterans who have diabetes, also suffer from some degree of Erectile Dysfunction (“ED”). If your diabetes is service connected (because of exposure to Agent Orange in Vietnam, for example), the ED condition should be rated as secondary to the primary service connected condition. ED may also be service connected as a secondary condition to such things as side effects of medications taken for SC conditions or other physical and mental conditions.In its regulations, the Department of Veterans Affairs classifies erectile dysfunction (also known as impotence) under a category called “loss of a creative organ.” When the VA grants service connection for ED, it often rates it at 0%, but pays the claim under a separate category called Special Monthly Compensation.

Veterans Disability Benefits

Most veterans know that the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) provides disability benefits to vets who suffered an injury or illness directly connected to their service. However, these same veterans may not know that the VA also provides benefits for conditions caused or worsened by the initial service-connected disability. These are known as secondary service- connected impairments.Secondary service connection may be established for an illness or impairment which was caused or worsened by an existing service-connected disability. The Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) says "A disability which is proximately due to, or the result of a service-connected disease or injury, shall be service connected, and shall be considered part of the original service-connected condition."

Although the VA promises such benefits to disabled veterans, actually receiving them may not be easy. Proving that your new condition was the result of your service-connected impairment or that your existing condition was made worse by your service-connected impairment may require extensive medical evidence and visits to doctors.

By his own reckoning, a Navy electrician spent just eight hours in Vietnam, during a layover on his flight back to. He bought some cigarettes and snapped a few photos.

The jaunt didn't make for much of a war story, and there is no record it ever happened. But the man successfully argued that he may have been exposed to Agent Orange during his stopover and that it might have caused his diabetes even though decades of research into the defoliant have failed to find more than a possibility that it causes the disease.

Because of worries about Agent Orange, about Vietnam veterans -- more than one-quarter of the 1 million receiving disability checks are getting compensation for diabetes, according to Department of Veterans Affairs records obtained by The Associated Press through the Freedom of Information Act.

More Vietnam veterans are being compensated for diabetes than for any other malady, including post-traumatic stress disorder, hearing loss or general wounds.